Archive for 'Pies (Savory)'

I was walking to work the other day and got handed a menu for the Tuck Shop, an Australian Meat Pie shop hidden away in an Internet Cafe that I wrote about a little over a month ago. In the menu I saw an item that I hadn’t noticed before… “The Floater”. Any Aussie pie of your choice, covered in pea soup made by Madeleine the Crepe Lady (a little old French lady who makes crepes in the same Internet Cafe). It sounded like a marriage made in heaven… and with the weather starting to get gross- the perfect winter lunch.

Now, I will admit that “The Floater” is an unfortunate name. While it may be an Australian term for a pie covered in soup- it has come to mean something far grosser in our frat boyish American culture. (As a matter of fact, when I told one of my co-workers what I had eaten for lunch… he joked that it was also what I “would be making in a few hours”) But you can’t blame these guys… they’re Australian! And it’s still a catchy name, even though the heavy pie doesn’t really float in Madeleine’s hearty pea soup.

Nothing is more fulfilling then finding a hidden food jem in Midtown. It can come in all forms too. There’s the place that is well known, but literally hidden- like the Burger Joint, hidden behind a curtain at the Parker Meridien Hotel. Then there’s the place that looks like a boring deli, but has a hidden specialty- like the Korean food at Cafe Duke. And of course there is discovering that good food cart, which in Midtown is literally like finding a needle size hot dog, in a haystack size pile of gigantic sausages.

But the most rewarding find, is the truly hidden jem. The one that nobody tells you about. The one you find on your own, without reading anything about it, or getting an email from a reader. It’s pretty tough too. There are very few places that I haven’t been emailed about, and somehow this double jem has managed to slip through the cracks. Lucky for me, I walk by it every day on my way home from work…

I’m talking about the CyberCafe, a euro-style internet cafe that caters to backpackers and tourists looking to jump on-line while they sip on coffee or eat boring sandwiches and pastries. But this is not your ordinary internet cafe. Actually it is… in every way but one. The food. The CyberCafe is home to two of the best (and most unique) Midtown Lunch options: Tuck Shop & Madeliene “The Crepe Lady”. I have no idea how it happened, or what the business arrangement is, or who thought it would be a good idea to put these two delicious lunch options inside an internet cafe for tourists… but who cares. It’s there, so we might as well take advantage of our stroke of good luck!